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1-1994
The Difference Between Holocaust and Genocide
John A. Drobnicki
CUNY York College
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Recommended Citation
Drobnicki, John A. 1994, Jan. The Difference Between Holocaust and Genocide. Polish-American Journal, 6.
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JANUARY 1994
POLISN-AMERICAN JOURNAL
6
The Difference Between
Holocaust and Genocide
Violence inflicted by mankind
upon mankind is nothing new. There
'have been many tragedies through­
out our long history,-including sev­
eral in this century alone: the artifi­
cial famine in Ukraine, the prisons
of Stalin, the terror of
Amin, and
the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, to
name a few. But is anything more
terrifying than the brutalities inflicted
by Nazi Germany agairist those that
it classified as its enemies? It caiihot
be denied that the Nazis belipred
that they had many “enemies": for
example, people from over twenty
different countries were imprisoned
in Auschwitz alone. But does a
shared suffering, if riot a shared fate,
mean equality among the victims?
FORUM
JOHN A DROBNICKI
Some might say that it is, obscene
to argue about who suffered more at
the hands o f the N aas. But like it or
not, there are groups arguing,.and it
■has even appeared in theseveiypages.
Many Polish groups have begun
fighting for the recognition o f the
suffering o f the Poles at the hands o f
N aa Germany, implying, a id in,
some cases even stating, that Poles
and Jews werfe co-wctiths o f the
Holocaust. Docs the fact that sev­
eral million Poles were killed during
World W ar II mean that they suf­
fered as much as, less than, or more’
than the Jews? And what o f the
Roma (Gypsies)? Ian Hancock has
written that “the N aas would have
gassed six million Tjypfies too, if
there had been six million Gypsies."
And how about the homosexuals
and the “mental defectives* that also
suffered under Hitler? Is there a
difference between Holocaust and
genocide?
W hat makes the Jewish Holo­
caust unique is that an entire bureaupatic apparatus, was created to
define who A ey lyerc, where they
should live or be forced to live, and
eventually, to see that they would
live no more. This was not murder
as a byproduct o f war, not casualties
as a result o f skirmishes or partisan
activities, but the end-result o f an
■ideology that had for years been call­
ing Jews vermin and also calling for
their destruction. This was a sophis­
ticated machine, an industry devel­
oped to exterminate first and fore­
most- the Jews o f Europe. For ex­
ample, although Auschwitz was not
built to kill Jews, Jpvs became its
primaiyMctims: 1.35 o f the 1.6 mil­
lion killed there, according to Yehuda
Bauer.
. •;
It is true that had, A e war lasted
longer, the Poles probably wo\Jd
have shared th pfatcof the Jews. But
it did noti vWc'dq,^^^^
what
might have been,, but only what was.
O f courw,"n<>' one c ^ deny the
terrible treatment of the Poles by '
N a a Germany,, and by the Soviet
Union^—and the purpose o f this ar­
ticle is not to diminish the suffering
of the Poles. Poland had been wiped
from the map and was in effect one ;
large prison cim p, where the penalty
for hdpingjew s was death. Those
Poles who helped Jews deserve our.
praise. Sitting here comfortably fifty
years later, we cannot condemn those
Poles who did not help Jews because
wc, have no idea what Aey them­
selves were going through, trying to
ensure their own survival and^ their
families’ survival.
T o say that the Poles were not'co- j
victims with the Jews' in t^e Holo- '
caust is not to say that ftie Poles vvcre
riot victims o f attempted genocide.
But„are genocide and Holocaust the
same thing? The Jewish tragedy was
unique in that even though all vic­
tims were not Jews, , all Jews were
victims (if they were caught). The
same thing canhOt be smd o f anyone
except the Rpma. Irr fact, a “Gypsy*
was someone who had at least two
^eat-grandpafente who were Gypsies, an even stricter classifrcation
than that applied to Jews.
M any Jews tried to escape the
terrible fate that awaited them by
disguising themselves as non-Jews.
Did any non-Jews try to survive in
Nazi-occupied Poland by disguising
themselves as Jews?,Wearing a cru­
cifix did not ensure a 100% chance of
■survival, but the odds were certainly
better than if one was wearing a
yellow Star-of-David. Yes, Poles and
Jews suffered at the hands o f the
Nazis, but they suffered, in the words
o f Yisrael Gutman, two “separate
fri^tfulnesses.”